


when the days of golden dreams had perished

by norvegiae



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Scurvy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24878107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norvegiae/pseuds/norvegiae
Summary: “I might ask you to kiss me, Francis.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 42
Kudos: 119





	when the days of golden dreams had perished

“I might ask you to kiss me, Francis.”

There is silence as Francis absorbs this, looks down to see James watching him with an unreadable expression. He is perched on the edge of James’ low, narrow bed, ignoring the pins and needles already coming on in his left foot. It is a calm night and the canvas walls of James’ tent billow lazily, like maintop sails in a sluggish breeze. If Francis closes his eyes he can almost picture it; happier, purposeful days. “Like Nelson and Hardy? Edward’s comparison has stuck with you, I see.”

James smiles tightly and closes his eyes, tilts his head away slightly. He does not mean like Nelson and Hardy, and they both know it.

“I might ask you to do it,” he eventually says again. Francis picks at a loose thread on the cuff of James’ shirt. “But I think it would be too painful. To let something begin with the end so much in sight.”

Francis stills, fingers clenching at James’ sleeve, wishing James would look at him, scared to reach out and make him turn his head for fear of hurting him more than he is already hurting. “James,” he breathes. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Come now.” James heaves a breath; it rattles out of him. “We both know what’s happening.”

Francis turns his head away, forces himself to stare at the bright light of the lantern on the table, in the hope that it will stem the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. “I’ll kiss you. If it brings you comfort.”

James’ fingers, as cold as the grave, wrap around his wrist. “Will you be there? At the end?”

Angry words rush into Francis’ mind, and he wants to shout, and to tell James to stop this kind of talk, but he swallows it down. What good will it do? There is no good that he can do now, unless something miraculous happens; unless he steps out of the tent to find himself on the cobbles of Harley Street, or in the leafy shade of an orange grove, there is nothing he can do for James, nothing he can bring him, nothing to ease his pain and stave off the inevitable. But he will be there for him, whatever happens. He is quite sure of this. “Yes,” he murmurs, twisting back to face him. “Yes, of course.”

James smiles again, the skin crinkling around his eyes. “ _That’s_ my comfort.”

Francis takes his hand, gently, cradling his fingers in his own. “What would a kiss be, then?”

There is almost a mischievous glint in James’ eyes, but only almost. “An indulgence,” he says, which makes Francis smile. “I’ve always been indulgent.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” Francis says. “I’ve been sure of it since the day I met you.”

James grins, and Francis has to fight to keep the smile on his own face at the sight of those black and bloodied gums. “Wasn’t I a pretty sight at Greenhithe, Francis. Polished and shining in the sun.”

“You were,” Francis agrees. It isn’t a lie; he remembers standing on the dockside, scowling and squinting in the bright sunlight as James made easy conversation with Le Vesconte and Hodgson, seething with annoyance at the idea that James could be at once so irritating and so very attractive. James had started laughing, they had all laughed, and Francis had at once gone back to _Terror,_ down to the hold to busy himself with something unnecessary until he could no longer hear easy laughter, and the image of James Fitzjames in all his regalia was no longer seared so fiercely into his brain.

“You were,” he says again, because James seems to enjoy it, judging by the way his fingers flex in Francis’ hold. “Your hair curled so sweetly.”

“Damn hair. Bloody waste of time,” James says, laughs and chokes on it, and descends into coughing.

Francis brings him some water, lays a hand lightly on his arm as he settles again. “You should get some rest.”

James nods, his eyes falling to Francis’ hand, which moves to squeeze gently at James’ wrist, before Francis withdraws it as he moves to get unsteadily to his feet.

“Before you go,” James murmurs, and Francis stills, knows he won’t hear his voice above the scrape of gravel and flap of tent canvas. There is that look in James’ eye again, a glint of something playful which in his prime would have been quite arresting. “Would you grant me an indulgence?”

“I thought you didn’t want it,” Francis replies, stuck in an awkward crouching position, between sitting and standing. He sits back down cautiously, holding James’ gaze.

James shakes his head. “I want it.”

What time Francis has wasted on this expedition, chasing the bottom of whiskey bottles to help himself ignore the yearning he felt for the most irritating and intriguing man he has ever met. All those nights spent imagining the closeness of another person, imagining James warming his sheets and making him laugh and bringing joy into his pathetic existence.

That closeness that Francis so longed for is far beyond them now, though Francis now realises it has always been beyond them. The world has never had space for them to find each other in such a way. What they had, instead, were terse words across a dinner table and a glancing, drunken blow to the face. James had taken it so well, it had not even left a mark, which meant that either Francis’ punch was as pitiably weak as the rest of his drunken self, or that James was so much stronger than Francis had given him credit for.

Both are true, Francis knows now, both are true.

He can no longer give to James everything he gave him in his most private, shameful imaginings, but he supposes a kiss is not impossible.

He twists, trying to lean down with as much grace as he can muster and presses his mouth to James’. It is a brief kiss, dry and chaste, and Francis doesn’t close his eyes, wants to see what happens on James’ face.

His eyes flutter shut, and when Francis sits up, he looks almost smug.

“Well,” Francis says once James’ eyes open again. “How was that?”

James reaches for him, puts a hand on Francis’ arm, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into Francis’ sleeve, his skin. Francis tries to concentrate on how it feels, grounded and comforting, and not on the jutting bones of James’ hand, his mottled skin or his bloodied nails. “Beautiful,” James eventually says, and Francis quite agrees.

A moment of beauty in this bleak and unforgiving tableau, and Francis thinks that no one on Earth could begrudge them that.

**Author's Note:**

> title from Remembrance by Emily Brontë
> 
> find me at norvegiae.tumblr.com


End file.
